Charles Dana,
Editor,
The New York Sun, Dec.,1897.

Dear Virginia,
     Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little.
     In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole truth and knowledge.
     Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
     He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance, to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Early 1900s Post Card

     Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in Fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in chimneys on Christmas evening to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?

     Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.

     Did you ever see Fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there.

     You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart.

     Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.

     Is it real?

     Ah, Virginia, in all the world there is nothing else real and abiding.

          No Santa Claus? Thank God, he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia…nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

The Editor

(Charles Dana, The New York Sun, 1897 ~ in answer to a letter from a little girl, asking “Is there a Santa Claus?”)

"The best teacher, until one comes to adult pupils, is not the one who knows most, but the one who is most capable of reducing knowledge to that simple compound of the obvious and the wonderful which slips into the infantile comprehension.  A man of high intelligence, perhaps, may accomplish the thing by a conscious intellectual feat.  But it is vastly easier to the man (or woman) whose habits of mind are naturally on the plane of a child's.  The best teacher of children, in brief, is one who is essentially childlike."

~ H. L. Mencken (1880 - 1956) American journalist, editor, critic.

As we send our children and grandchildren back to school this morning, let us vow to support the voices of reason.  Let us take a minute to write, to e-mail, to out-shout the self-serving rhetoric of pro-gun advocates screaming outdated legislation. lbw